在新冠封锁期间，全球青少年女孩出现跳跃、击打、辱骂和“豆子”“甜菜根”等无意义词的抽动，被神经科医生称为“疫情中的疫情”，而其来源被判定为 TikTok 抽动。2021 年 3 月仅三周内，带有 #Tourette 和 #Tic 标签的视频观看量上升 7%，达到 58 亿。
研究发现，网红更倾向发布更极端的抽动以提升互动，最受欢迎的创作者中有三分之二在账号上售卖周边而直接获利。Cohen 认为商业、娱乐与健康在网上“碰撞”，并以规模数据指向“健康被互联网劫持”：YouTube 健康视频累计观看量超过 2000 亿次，人们每天用谷歌搜索医疗问题达数亿次。
AI 正加速这一趋势：Ipsos 的一项近期民调显示，接近 30% 的英国受访者从大型语言模型获取医疗建议；全球已有 4000 万人用 ChatGPT 寻求医疗建议，且新增功能可基于医疗记录与健身追踪应用进行个性化。她列出三项变化与相应数字证据：英国成年人在 2020 至 2023 年间寻求 ADHD 诊断上升 400%，而 2023 年对 TikTok 最热视频的分析发现，少于 50% 准确反映 ADHD 症状；与此同时，跨境与隐蔽广告在“监管荒野”中扩散，迫使医生追加筛查与活检以排除疾病并增加焦虑与资源浪费。
During covid-19 lockdowns, teenage girls worldwide developed jumping, hitting, shouting and non-sequiturs like “beans” and “beetroot”, which neurologists framed as a “pandemic within a pandemic” and later linked to TikTok-driven tics. In just three weeks in March 2021, views of TikTok videos tagged #Tourette and #Tic rose 7% to 5.8bn.
Research described influencers as more likely to post more extreme tics to boost engagement, while two-thirds of the most popular creators sold merchandise on their accounts and profited directly. Cohen argues commerce, entertainment and wellness are colliding online and marshals scale indicators of health being “hijacked”: YouTube health videos exceed 200bn views and people google medical questions hundreds of millions of times per day.
AI is accelerating the shift: a recent Ipsos poll found nearly 30% of British respondents get medical advice from large language models, and 40m people worldwide already use ChatGPT for medical advice, with a new feature tailoring answers to medical records and fitness trackers. She ties three internet-driven changes to quantified signals: adult ADHD diagnosis-seeking in Britain rose 400% from 2020 to 2023, and a 2023 analysis found under 50% of the most-watched ADHD TikTok videos accurately reflected symptoms, alongside a “wild west” of cross-border, hard-to-spot advertising that leaves doctors ordering extra screenings and biopsies, amplifying anxiety and wasting resources.
Source: Want to know what’s wrong with you?
Subtitle: “Bad Influence” argues that separating medical fact from fiction is becoming harder online
Dateline: 2月 05, 2026 04:18 上午